


burning after all

by Rethira



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: M/M, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2049087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naesala chooses him one day, and Pelleas loves him for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burning after all

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my 100th cumulative fic (including stuff i wrote under pseuds)!
> 
> i took a little vote and people voted for "gay birds" and "major character death + makeouts (in that order)" which i guess says a lot about me and the people who know me

Pelleas presses his lips against still, cold ones.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

 

The darkness has been Pelleas’ friend for years, decades. It whispers to him sometimes; the spirit he’d contracted with laughs sometimes. He hasn’t seen it since the mark appeared on his forehead, but he can remember the inhuman eyes and wide, gaping mouth. He can remember how it had pooled on the floor before him, like living shadow. He’d touched it, and his fingers had come away stained black.

The spirit had touched him back, wrapped its spindly fingers around his wrist and clawed its way up to his mouth. It had laughed at him – it still laughs at him, everything Pelleas does is a delight for the spirit – and then it had pushed inside him, tangling itself around his very essence. It squeezes tighter every day. Soon there will be nothing left.

Still. Pelleas considers it all a small price to pay.

And besides, so much of him is bound up in darkness anyway, it hardly seems to matter.

So he listens to the whispers in the dark, and is content.

 

Naesala chooses him one day, and Pelleas loves him for it.

 

There are forbidden books in Daein’s libraries. Micaiah had asked Pelleas to find them for her, and then she’d locked them away in the dungeons, with only a key for herself and a key for Pelleas.

She trusts Pelleas.

He thinks that maybe she was wrong to.

 

Pelleas hasn’t had nightmares since he was a child. There were nightmares to have back then, before every bad dream he could have became _real_. The spirit had teased him about them at first, but by the time he was crowned king, it settled into tormenting him over the realities that could happen.

He could kill everyone in Daein. That had been enough for a long, long time, until the Pact was sent from his skin and he let relief unfurl in his chest.

Naesala _does_ have nightmares. Once, Pelleas asks the darkness what he dreams about, and the spirit whispers _the forest is burning_ , and after that Pelleas doesn’t ask anymore.

 

The darkness brings him the first word. It’s a sort of shivering in the back of his head first, and then the whispers come, rushed and harder to decipher than usual.

And then the spirit’s voice cuts through them.

 _he’s dead_ , the spirit murmurs, something like delight in its voice, and Pelleas goes still in the darkness of his room.

 

Bird laguz have poor night vision, Pelleas knows. Even so, Naesala never complains. Darkness probably doesn’t matter anyway, given the amount of time they spend in bed. He kisses Pelleas softly, gently, like Pelleas is something to be treasured, and Pelleas can never work up the courage to say _don’t, stop, I’m not worth this_.

He has the feeling Naesala would laugh at him anyway; not unkindly, no, but....

Naesala trails fingers down Pelleas’ spine, kisses where wings would meet his skin if he had them. It’s so different from the normal Naesala, the one everyone else sees. Sometimes Pelleas thinks Naesala _is_ laughing at him, for being such a fool.

But then Naesala will look at Pelleas, and it will make Pelleas feel like a fool for ever doubting _this_.

 

His wings drag on the ground, and Pelleas keeps almost tripping on them. He’s probably leaving a trail of crushed feathers behind, and oh, Naesala would have been _furious_.

“Sorry,” Pelleas says, over and over again.

The spirit laughs in his mind, so _happy_ , and Pelleas knows that soon this will all be over.

 

Naesala had often come at night. Or arrived with it, at any rate. Pelleas always knew when he arrived, not because Naesala would rap on the windows with his beak, but because of the shadows he cast as he flew over the castle. Because of the darkness that Naesala disturbed as he moved. Because of the whispers in the dark.

He’d been intrigued by it. Interested, even though he had little talent for magic himself. More than some laguz, it was true, but not enough to cast. He’d encouraged Pelleas with his little tricks; darkness was _meant_ to injure, to wound. To kill. Naesala had thought it amusing that Pelleas could write tomes to control the darkness with such precision he could make shadow-plays on the wall. Naesala had liked it.

Pelleas has a series of tomes, some used, some untouched, on his bookshelves. None of them could even maim a person if cast. Naesala would pick one at random, and ask Pelleas to use it. He laughed sometimes, at the tricks Pelleas could make the darkness do.

The spirit would laugh too, but with none of the warmth Naesala had.

 

The key is cold in his hand. Everywhere is cold, actually. His fingers are turning blue-black, or maybe just black, and the spirit croons _soon, soon_.

There is one forbidden book he should have burnt.

Instead, he takes it from the shelves and carries it outside.

 

The spirit’s whispers come to a halt, and Pelleas sees it again, for a moment. Darkness incarnate. It giggles, childlike, and then it pours into Nae- the corpse. Through its mouth and eyes and ears and nose, invading every tiny space, until all that’s left is a tiny smear of darkness on Naesala’s lips.

Pelleas kisses it away.

A hand cups the back of his head, the fingers cold and sharp. Inhuman, he thinks vaguely, but he knew that already.

 _Pelleas_ , the spirit laughs, right into his mind. _Pelleas, Pelleas, Pelleas_.

When he opens his eyes, it’s Naesala’s face staring down at him - Naesala’s face, but the spirit’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> rethi: putting the romance back into necromancy since 2014


End file.
